Vote vote vote like a baby stoat!

Yes, I'm a weirdo, and the post title was totally ripped from a Cute Overload concept. Don't judge.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning I finally decided to give up on ever receiving my official California ballot, the one that I ordered 3 weeks ago, and go in to the US Consulate and get an emergency one. They open at 8 a.m., so I notified my boss that I would be late and headed over there. Well, as all bureaucratic (it took me 3 tries to spell that correctly) offices go, I was there at 8 and they let me in, but the actually offices don't open until 8:30. Got my ballot, went over to work.

According to the consulate, I can go to the Fedex International office and they'll mail my ballot for free before October 29th...which is today. I told myself that after work yesterday I would go straight to Fedex to mail it, but then I left the emergency ballot on my desk at work, and cursed myself all the way home for being flakey.

Then I get home and find this on the coffee table.

The universe is telling me to vote. And, I could maybe vote twice now that I have two ballots. But I won't, and have given the emergency one (which is a write-in absentee ballot, allowing you only to vote for President, Senate, and House Rep) to Julia, so she can do her civic duty.

And today, for SURE, I am going after work to Fedex to mail this sucker in. If they won't let me do it for free, I'll make a stink. That, or I'll just pay. It's for a good cause.

a localized drought...

...in our house. The pump that brings the water up from the pipes to the tank on the roof, which then powers our toilets, showers and faucets is now broken. So we all wake up, a little bit hung over after our barbecue last night (which was incredibly enjoyable), desperately in need of a shower and a good toothbrushing and--no water. It's gonna be a great Sunday.

A Spring Roll Adventure

Last week, Thi and Jan and I endeavored (and succeeded!) to make fried spring rolls. First Thi made a mixture of ground pork, thin noodles cut up with scissors, mushrooms, garlic, onions, and black pepper. Then we peeled apart these super thin sheets of what I'm assuming is rice paper and rolled them up.

Here's Thi, demonstrating.

Then I gave it a try. Apparently, I'm a natural. Jan, however...

His turned out a little sloppy. We made fun of it for it, which I'm sure he enjoyed.

The end result: yummy fried spring rolls, eaten with rice and greens and cheap Da Lat red wine. Dee-lish.

Sorry for the delay

...But I had a helluva weekend and am super tired. I will try to post later today or tonight. I've got tons to say, but making my brain work is a daunting task at the moment.

More to come.

Shots from my weekend

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in while, but the internet at my house is sporadic. But I'm here, and still blogging.

This is the stir-fry that I've told many of you about. This woman has a cart across the street from where I live, and she just has a big skillet where she fries potatoes, noodles, pork, eggs, greens, and onions in soy sauce. Then she put a huge amount of it (see below) in a to-go container and sells it for 12,000 dong. 16,000 dong is a dollar, so that's about $0.75 for dinner. It is sooooo good, and allows me to be lazy without feeling too guilty. There is also a cart selling spring rolls (the cold kind, not the fried kind) for 1,000 dong each, if I want to feel healthier.

That was my Saturday night dinner, that I had before going out with Thi to a few clubs (it was kind of a bust; we kept having weird guys dancing with us, so we had to stragetically position ourselves on the dance floor for maximum space with minimum sketch factor). Sunday morning Thi took me, still in my pajamas, to an alley nearby that is a market in the mornings. She bought stuff and helped my buy stuff, and the Vietnamese women kept telling her (she translated for me) that they loved my skin. (Also, someone this morning whizzed by on a motorbike on my way to work and like, rubbed my arm for good luck. It was super weird. All my life I've felt like being pale was a bad thing, but now people are rubbing me for luck! It's a crazy world.)

So the market had meat, vegetables, rice, noodles, household items, clothes, everything (More photos on Facebook).

I had no idea this many kinds of rice existed, or what the difference is, beyond the price.


Once we got back home and cooked brunch (fried eggs and bread and fruit for me, fried noodles with pork and greens for Thi), I went to the Hash (http://www.saigonh3.com/) to get some exercise and be outdoors. Here are the runners taking off:


This is a strangler fig tree, also known as a banyan, also known as a Bodhi tree, because according to legend the Buddha found enlightenment under one of these (I know SO much about Buddha now!). I think they are the coolest things ever, since their roots grow down from branches to reach the ground for water. They grow over statues, temples, other trees, anything that stands in their way.


This is J.P. Met him on the first Hash that I did a few weeks ago, and this week he was the Hare, which means he set the course. They made him drink a lot of beer as a reward/punishment.


Beer time. "Drink it down down down down, down down down down..." (This is called the "Down Down" song, to chug along to.)


That was my weekend. Got home from the Hash around 7:30, just in time for the power to go out again. This time, it was a circuit or something, because all we had to do was flip a few switches to get it back. Unfortunately, I did not know this until Maraj got home, so I ate dinner by candlelight.

Happy Monday, everybody. (Groan)

On being a foreigner

As I was on the back of my xe om on my way home, I was struck with the realization of how to verbalize the odd feeling that has been plaguing me a lot lately. When I first got here, I felt it almost immediately, and it manifested itself in the thought, "My parents won't like it here." Every time I've moved somewhere (i.e., Chicago, Paris, and now here), my parents plan to visit me, and when I thought of that I felt uncomfortable. And I didn't know how to explain that discomfort, or why exactly I felt it.

(Note: Mom and Dad, I know you're reading this, which is cool. It just felt like an idea that I'd share with everyone.)

When I moved to Paris, I was (obviously) a foreigner. And I felt like one in some big or small way the whole time; I cannot fully escape my American perspective--that is to say, my unique perspective on life that is colored by the fact that I have grown up in somewhere that is not France, and I did not expect to. But in Paris I felt more and more at home; Speaking the language and, let's face it, looking like everyone else helped me feel like I could blend in and belong.

Here, I am constantly reminded that I am different. And I know that I've only been here a month, and that I should not be making hasty judgments, but this is more like an observation, and it is one that has been confirmed by every foreigner that I've met here who has been here much longer than I have. In this city, I get the distinct feeling that I will always be a foreigner. I don't look like everyone else, I don't speak the language, and I come from a culture that is a fixation for many of the people here. The result is that I get yelled at (not negatively, just "Hello! Where you from?" or "Motorbike?") and stared at and spoken to by random people, and that anyone selling anything will automatically hike up the price for me. The people I see from day to day recognize me and remember me because I am a foreigner, because I am that blond girl who buys coffee every day or who bought noodles just once.

Now, I'm not saying this is a tremendously bad thing, and it's something that I'm sure I will get used to (or not, and I'll deal). This experience will mold me like all others have into a different person than I am now, which is something I welcome. But it is not for everyone.

I've run out of steam on this for right now. It may be a subject that I'll return to.

Stuff from all over

For a while I've been very much annoyed with the florescent lights in my room; being assaulted by blinding white light when i get home from work is not conducive to relaxation. So during one of the power outages last week, I ventured out into Pham Ngu Lao for dinner and to stroll around. And found a woman selling really cool lamps. I bought one (the below picture is up against my mirror), and it came disassembled, so it was a bitch to put together. However, I finally succeeded:


This is my street. The gate directly on the left is my house. I took this on Saturday when I went out to walk to Cholon, the Chinatown area of Ho Chi Minh City.


And, of course, there are these all over. It's the only American chain here (well, ok, there is one Pizza Hut in the most "Westernized" neighborhood of the city)--which surprises me, because I expected that Macdonald's would have achieved world domination by this point. KFC here does have really good iced coffee, though. (It started raining, so I went inside for one to wait until the rain passed.)


I walked to a street in Cholon that is filled with traditional herb markets--basically, every store had huge burlap sacks of herbs. The smell was potent, in a pleasant way. Every once in a while I came across an apothecary selling, amoung other things, snake wine (wikipedia it, I don't want to explain it right now) and dried seahorses in jars. I kind of wanted to take a picture, but I thought they might not appreciate it if I wasn't buying anything.

That's about all I've got right now.

Typhoons are fun

Last night we had another giant storm, and the power went out again (It had gone out on Wednesday night, too). I was the only one home, so I used my cell phone for light and went to find candles and Ruth's lighter, and then I camped out on the couch with a book and read by candlelight. Was not all that unpleasant, actually. But hopefully tonight that doesn't happen again. I'm getting sick of it.

Unrelated side note: this morning on my way to work I saw a monk in a bright orange, um, monk suit (what are their robes called??) and waiting for the bus. I smiled.